DaveinOlyWA wrote:This is why Solar does not pencil out. It is because we as individuals can take the matter into our own hands. Big Energy simply cannot allow that to happen.

I am not a fan of utility solar. PV solar belongs on our rooftops. But not all solar is created equal. Ivanpah is about the worst of the worst when it comes to "renewable" energy.

DaveinOlyWA wrote:There is little doubt Nuclear would win on several fronts, but it also loses on a few but lets not get blinded by the number of bullet points because Nuclear loses in a very big way.

Fair enough. My complaint is that CA is eliminating excellent solutions for electricity production such as hydroelectric and nuclear and replacing it with very costly and damaging "solutions" which cannot (yet) replace baseload production.

TVA, OTOH, embraces both hydroelectric and nuclear. The main drawback of that approach is that it makes it a bit hard to justify PV when electricity is so cheap.

Well there is simply no "one size fits all" solution and maybe centralized Solar in that area is less feasible but we are seeing too many power plants generating huge profits and huge mountains of waste and have yet to see any hint of a long term solution.

The very fact that Solar is so scalable makes it an invaluable source. Yes its part time and yes its a bit of a land hog but it can also be utilized without using an extra inch of real estate. A great FB post about Target becoming the #1 solar power source among retailers. They have a LOT of roof space! But because solar takes power out of the total control of the utilities, it will not have major financial backing. But we may not need that. The solar movement is doing very well in some areas while just now getting recognition in other areas.

We also have to look at the fact that Nuclear plant costs are not going to go down without some sort of major break thru but Solar is because its not a mature science yet. We are still building it, still figuring it out. As I see it, the only thing that is stopping solar is not land use, its power storage. Solve that and I don't see Nuclear having much of a chance in most of the country.

RegGuheert wrote:My complaint is that CA is eliminating excellent solutions for electricity production such as hydroelectric and nuclear and replacing it with very costly and damaging "solutions" which cannot (yet) replace baseload production.

Hydro has large environmental costs which is why many large dams are being dismantled on the west coast.

Cherry picking a solar plant which would not be built today as an example of why solar is bad, is just that picking cherries.

If you want to look at nuclear gone bad, there's plenty of examples of those - just north of here there's a plant called SONGS - mothballed because the utility and contractor made a critical mistake and so costly to fix that it was determined to be more cost effective to replace it with other sources of generation. So much for being too cheap to meter.

As far as your earlier claims that nuclear power kills infinitely fewer birds that Ivanpah, that's almost certainly exaggerating - all human activity has an effect on wildlife. Never mind that buildings, cars and cats are the biggest man-made causes of avian deaths, but I don't see many people clamoring to dismantle those.

"Baseload" is a myth since no power plant is 100% renewable. And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation. Baseload is an old argument used to promote inflexible generators when what we need are flexible generators so we can integrate as much renewable energy as possible.

drees wrote:Hydro has large environmental costs which is why many large dams are being dismantled on the west coast.

Dismantling the electricity solution with the lowest environmental impact per kWh and replacing it with production with about the highest impact is ludicrous.

drees wrote:Cherry picking a solar plant which would not be built today as an example of why solar is bad, is just that picking cherries.

Making straw man arguments about something I never said or implied is just that: a straw-man fallacy.

drees wrote:If you want to look at nuclear gone bad, there's plenty of examples of those - just north of here there's a plant called SONGS - mothballed because the utility and contractor made a critical mistake and so costly to fix that it was determined to be more cost effective to replace it with other sources of generation. So much for being too cheap to meter.

I never said nuclear was too cheap to meter. Another straw-man argument?

drees wrote:As far as your earlier claims that nuclear power kills infinitely fewer birds that Ivanpah, that's almost certainly exaggerating - all human activity has an effect on wildlife. Never mind that buildings, cars and cats are the biggest man-made causes of avian deaths, but I don't see many people clamoring to dismantle those.

Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.

drees wrote:"Baseload" is a myth since no power plant is 100% renewable. And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation. Baseload is an old argument used to promote inflexible generators when what we need are flexible generators so we can integrate as much renewable energy as possible.

1) Once the grid connections to other states were severed or weakened, South Australia's grid stability was greatly reduced2) Large groups of wind generators dropping offline simultaneously was "the straw that broke the camel's back."3) The failure which occurred in SA was predicted to happen by the grid operator, AEMO, in October 2014, about two years prior to the event:

AEMO wrote:While these developments benefit SA and the NEM, having a high proportion of wind and PV generation can present a risk for SA if the Heywood Interconnector link to Victoria is disconnected at a time when all local conventional synchronous generators are offline. This occurs as wind and PV generators, by themselves, are not able to provide the required controls to ensure system security.

Again, eliminating affordable, environmentally-friendly, safe and effective baseload power generation with "solutions" which do not meet the requirements of the electrical grid is a foolhardy adventure.

Will we get there eventually? Sure. But let's take logical steps rather than foolish ones.

RegGuheert wrote:Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.

So you will ignore the impact of large hydro, but won't ignore the impact of Ivanpah? Got it.

RegGuheert wrote:The massive power outage which took down the entire grid in South Australia is quite instructive.

Every objective analysis of the South Australian outage comes two one of either two conclusions:1. With or without wind, the grid was going down that day.2. Adjusting the thresholds at which wind turbines would shut down (grid anomaly ride out parameters) would have either mitigated or prevented the problem.

RegGuheert wrote:Ignore the massive environmental damage of Ivanpah if you must, but I will not.

So you will ignore the impact of large hydro, but won't ignore the impact of Ivanpah? Got it.

I'm not suggesting you should ignore anything. What I am suggesting is that you recognize that the damage from large hydro is much smaller on a per-kWh basis. Statements that large hydroelectric dams do massive damage do not recognize that they are extremely benign on the basis of the amount of electricity they produce.

On top of that, the hydroelectric facilities are already in place. It makes no sense to tear them down and build more-damaging facilities to replace them.

drees wrote:

RegGuheert wrote:The massive power outage which took down the entire grid in South Australia is quite instructive.

Every objective analysis of the South Australian outage comes two one of either two conclusions:1. With or without wind, the grid was going down that day.2. Adjusting the thresholds at which wind turbines would shut down (grid anomaly ride out parameters) would have either mitigated or prevented the problem.

But they didn't ride through. You stated:

drees wrote:And the problem with large plants is that the effect of one going down is much more difficult to mitigate than distributed generation.

In fact, the large generators had no problem weathering the storm that hit SA last month. But the wind turbines are operating out in the storm with nowhere to hide. It was exactly the distributed generation that could not be mitigated in this failure, not the large plants. Those plants were the last part of the grid standing and were not the cause of the outage.

Yes, the ride-through parameters can be changed, but, by their very nature, wind generators can never be as hardened to weather as the nuclear reactor just commissioned in TN. In addition, they do not provide the rotating inertia that SA needs to stabilize their grid. SA is now faced with a serious question: Can they operate their grid with no synchronous generation in place and/or no link to other states (which have synchronous generators)? Is there even a cold-start capability in SA with no synchronous generators? The likely answers are no and no.

I think this could be the last nuke built. At least I think we are near the end of this cycle.I believe more will get dismantled than built in the coming decades.In the mean time it should serve well over the next 20 to 50 years.

Has the waste solution been worked out yet?

1 bar lost at 21,451 miles, 16 months.2 bar lost at 35,339 miles, 25 months.LEAF traded at 45,400 miles for a RAV4-EVI-Pace on order for end of 2018 delivery

Many being built in China. http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publicatio ... 36_web.pdf 10 new reactors powered up last year. I agree this technology seems to be surpassed by roof top solar and others. Nuc technology will have to vastly improved before it will make a comeback.

smkettner wrote:I think this could be the last nuke built. At least I think we are near the end of this cycle.I believe more will get dismantled than built in the coming decades.In the mean time it should serve well over the next 20 to 50 years.

Has the waste solution been worked out yet?

read somewhere some years ago about a reactor that uses spent rods as fuel. Not as efficient but solves the problem of our "soon to be bigger" that Mt. Everest aka spent fuel rods storage...

DNAinaGoodWay wrote:It takes so long to build these. Planning for this began in the 70's & 80's and it's design is similar to that era. But there are more in the pipeline:

Two new nuclear units being built by the Southern Company, in Georgia, and two more under construction in South Carolina, will employ a new, more-streamlined technology called an “advanced pressurized water reactor,” which is thought to be an even greater safety improvement over older technologies.